"There's something behind her eyes that you can't quite fathom—something Greta Garbo had," director Clarence Brown said of Elizabeth Taylor. "I really hate to call her an actress. She's much too natural for that." Taylor's combination of charisma and craft meshed beautifully with that of Richard Burton—one of the leading actors of his generation. This set includes their searing portrayals of battling spouses in Mike Nichols's 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which garnered Taylor the Oscar for Best Actress. (Sandy Dennis and Irene Sharaff won as well, for Best Supporting Actress and Costume Design, while Burton and Nichols were nominated.) In The V.I.P.s (1963), the couple are joined by Maggie Smith, Orson Welles, and other notables in an exclusive lounge at a London airport while their flights are delayed, while in 1964's The Sandpiper (which includes the Oscar-winning song "The Shadow of Your Smile") they begin a torrid affair—much to the chagrin of Eva Marie Saint, who plays Burton's wife. ("Taylor makes for one hot beach bum, and the connection she has with Burton is ballistic" wrote DVD Verdict.) Alec Guiness and Lillian Gish are on hand for The Comedians (1967), which places Taylor and Burton in Haiti during the despotic reign of "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

"[In the Nichols film], the 40-year-old Burton and 34-year-old Taylor transformed themselves into the moldering, moving-beyond-middle-aged pair who pervert an evening with unsuspecting guests via their intricate, insidious games of fact and fantasy. The results are just resplendent, an exercise in overkill that reaps more rewards the further it expands its excesses.... Add in the equally excellent work of George Segal and Sandy Dennis (turning drunken ditziness into an epic poem) and you've got one of post-modern Hollywood's greatest efforts."—DVD Verdict